Shuffling 3: “Want to Cover Up Her Scent?”
In that exact moment, the final warnings Mole had rattled off before entering the city were playing in Pei Yuan’s ears in full 3D surround sound:
“Boss, you’d better limit your contact with high-compatibility Omegas. No matter how alluring an Omega is, you’ve got to remain as calm as still water.”
It was already far too late.
Pei Yuan was filled with deep regret, thinking she never should have been blinded by beauty, blindly trusted Mole’s suppressant, and signed that agreement with Cen Zhixu.
And now look at her. Before she had even touched the perimeter of the Eye of Order, her identity was about to be exposed, and she would be hunted right out of the city!
With Cen Zhixu leaning against her shoulder, Pei Yuan didn’t dare move. She could only shrink back weakly, looking thoroughly pathetic:
“What? Alcohol?”
Pei Yuan offered a dry, flattering smile. “Chief, you must be hallucinating from working continuously without a break. Hurry up and get some proper rest, ah hahaha.”
Cen Zhixu leaned in even closer, poking Pei Yuan’s burning gland. “If not, then what are you dodging for?”
Pei Yuan turned her head, trembling with apprehension.
She happened to catch sight of a pair of beautiful grey-blue eyes, like a sea covered in a thin mist, looking her over with an inscrutable gaze.
“Is someone sneaking drinks,” Cen Zhixu said softly, “or does my contracted little girlfriend have something she’s hiding from me?”
Pei Yuan grew increasingly guilty. “Chief, I’m just an honest, hardworking little employee. How could I possibly keep anything from you?”
Cen Zhixu smiled softly. “Really?”
Pei Yuan nodded hurriedly.
Right at that moment, the instrument gave a soft beep, and the test results came out.
Cen Zhixu turned to pick them up, and Pei Yuan seized the opportunity to cast a glance at the metal door of the testing room.
The door was sensor-activated, with an emergency power-off button embedded on the left. In case of exposure, she would need to quickly take Cen Zhixu hostage and seize a vertical cloud ladder to head down.
If things spun completely out of control, she would have to abandon the hostage, use a medical cart to ram open the maintenance hatch, and escape through the abandoned waste drainage pipeline.
Pei Yuan mapped out her plan in silence.
The next second, Cen Zhixu looked at the report and let out an hm. “The results are pretty much the same as last time. Looks like I made a mistake.”
The heavy rock in Pei Yuan’s chest plummeted back to earth. Taking advantage of Cen Zhixu’s inattention, she let out a secret, long sigh of relief:
Mole, oh Mole! After messing with me so many times, you finally pulled through for once!
At the exact same time, in a mechanical scrap market in the White Tower’s outer district.
“Achoo! Achoo! Achoo!”
Mole sneezed three times in a row.
Wired cables crisscrossed overhead, and rusty iron-sheet sheds creaked in the wind.
Mechanical parts were piled haphazardly across the stalls: discarded scanners, receivers, and burnt-out old motherboards.
Hearing the commotion, Magpie looked up and clicked her tongue. “How come out of the three of us, the boss is the only one missing you? Looks like you hold a rather extraordinary place in her heart.”
Mole rubbed the bridge of her nose and rolled her eyes in annoyance. “Who knows? Maybe the boss has already turned into the pretty lady’s kept canary, only to get kicked straight off the bed by the lady for her abysmal skills, leaving her to curse me from afar just to vent her frustration.”
Magpie clicked her tongue twice. “Boss, oh boss, you can’t just rely on brute force when doing things. Technique is important too.”
Scorpion nodded. “Very important.”
The three of them happily continued picking and choosing through the junk. As for where Boss Red Snake was or whether she had actually been kicked off the bed by a pretty lady, it seemed no one cared at all.
Inside the secondary testing room, Cen Zhixu handed the printed report to Pei Yuan.
The cold white light made the pages look stark white, almost blindingly bright.
Pei Yuan glanced over it. The results were roughly identical to the previous test, save for a few extra data points.
She folded the report in half, folded it once more, and then let out a sigh of exaggerated distress.
“Looks like no matter how many times we run this, the outcome is still the same: D-class pheromone, degraded citrus.”
Pei Yuan smiled rather awkwardly. “Miss Cen, my pheromone must be awful. Did it affect you at all?”
Cen Zhixu pulled her cashmere shawl tighter around herself, her tone calm: “No.”
“At least for now, it hasn’t caused me any substantive trouble.”
Pei Yuan blinked and continued playing the pitiful card. “But moldy oranges and rotting peels, no matter how you look at it, can’t possibly smell good.”
As she spoke, she covertly tracked Cen Zhixu’s expression out of the corner of her eye, deliberately dragging out the tail end of her words.
She was like an orange droopy from the rain, rolling right up to someone’s boot and crying against the toe.
The little orange was crying far too miserably.
Cen Zhixu sighed.
Rubbing her temples, she explained, “Degraded citrus is merely a procedural naming convention. It outputs a label, not the sensory experience itself.”
“The database’s naming logic compresses complex information into short entries for storage, comparison, and retrieval.”
“Efficient, but inevitably crude.”
As she spoke, Cen Zhixu stepped a bit closer, picking up a strand of Pei Yuan’s curly hair draped over her shoulder and twirling it between her fingertips.
That curl was far more obedient than Pei Yuan herself. Touching Cen Zhixu’s hand, it wrapped around it tamely, looking remarkably soft.
It let her knead and play with it without a shred of resistance.
The cold, ethereal scent of white iris filtered in, thread by thread, through the narrow gap between them.
Cen Zhixu murmured softly, “This process itself dictates that many things will be lost.”
“Simplified and compressed.”
“Ceasing to exist.”
Pei Yuan understood only half of it. She nodded diligently, and as she nodded, her thoughts began to drift again: Cen Zhixu is so gorgeous.
“As for your pheromone,” Cen Zhixu continued, “the actual sensory experience deviates quite a bit from the report.”
She offered a faint smile. “At least, it’s not as terrible as the text describes.”
“Really?”
Pei Yuan’s eyes lit up for a second before dimming again. “Still, high-level Alphas are definitely better at pacifying Omegas, right?”
She stared at Cen Zhixu with wide, watery eyes, continuing to execute her grand master plan of acting pitiful, playing the victim, trading sympathy for intel, stealing the Eye of Order, and then making a run for it.
“If my rank were a bit higher, would I be able to help Miss Cen even better?”
Cen Zhixu fell silent for a moment, lingering briefly on those wide, falsely aggrieved eyes of the person before her.
“Pei Yuan.”
She called her name.
Not little dog, nor Miss Pei, simply Pei Yuan. Those two words rolled across her lips and fell away, as soft as a drop of water held on the tip of the tongue.
Cen Zhixu pulled her cashmere shawl upward by an inch, concealing the deep red bite mark on the back of her neck that had yet to fully fade.
“That will depend on your performance.”
“If a certain little girlfriend works extra hard and puts on a good show,” Cen Zhixu chuckled softly, “I might just be a bit more partial to you.”
She raised her hand, her fingertip landing lightly on the tip of Pei Yuan’s nose with an air of pampered indulgence.
“Want big sister to favor you?”
The cool touch landed, and before Pei Yuan could react, it pulled away. Like a butterfly pausing for a heartbeat, flapping its wings, and flying off again.
Pei Yuan froze.
After a long pause, she let out a muffled chuckle. “Chief, are you trying to comfort me?”
Cen Zhixu shifted her overlapping legs and curved her brows. “If you are willing, you may interpret it as comfort.”
Teased by her until her heart itched, Pei Yuan thought about maintaining her low-profile disguise one second and started acting brazenly bold the next.
Resting her chin in her hand, she feigned a thoughtful expression and spoke up: “So, what kind of relationship do you and I actually have right now, Chief?”
“Is it a contract, a business partnership,” Pei Yuan counted them off one by one, “or has this little girlfriend of mine officially started her shift?”
Pei Yuan’s original intent was just to ride the mood and tease her a bit further. Who would have guessed that the moment those words left her mouth, the smile on Cen Zhixu’s face would fade away entirely.
Her brow tightened, her gaze turned still, and that lingering, sticky ambiguity instantly vanished without a trace.
Cen Zhixu spoke coldly:
“I figured as much. You probably didn’t even open the email containing the electronic contract the assistant sent you.”
Her wheelchair rolled back half an inch, distancing herself to a safe zone.
“I spent two nights writing those clauses, and they aren’t meant to be decorations, nor are they something you can just sign and forget.”
“If you wish to properly fulfill your duties,” she said, “head back tonight and immediately start reading every single entry.”
Cen Zhixu folded her hands, resting them over her knees as she looked at her with a gentle, smiling curve of her brows:
“I will conduct unannounced spot-checks.”
Pei Yuan: “…”
Help, absolutely not!
Driven by the sheer terror of survival, once she got home from work, Pei Yuan resigned herself to sitting at her desk and opening the assistant’s email.
Pei Yuan didn’t mind reading text, provided the content was actually interesting.
Whenever her mercenary squad stopped in a city, ruins, or black market, Mole would frequently raid second-hand stalls for paper books.
When bored, Pei Yuan would pick one up and flip through a few pages. She found The Wilderness Survival Guide quite entertaining.
Who knew pine tree bark could be eaten when boiled soft, that tender cactus stems could be cooked with wild onions, and that fluorescent blue mushrooms were an absolute no-go?
Right at this moment, however, the light screen displayed an electronic document titled: Agreement on the Protection of Rights and Interests and Behavioral Standards of Both Parties During the Continuation of an Intimate Relationship Based on Pheromone Compatibility Test Results.
The title alone spanned thirty-three characters.
Pei Yuan took a deep breath, scrolled down a bit, and found that the table of contents alone spanned a full six and a half pages.
Pei Yuan felt darkness swallow her vision.
“Does Cen Zhixu take me for a medical student, a doctor of jurisprudence, or a human scanner?”
Before she even started reading, Pei Yuan started venting to the system. “Does she seriously expect me to read this entire thing?”
“She might as well have these clauses put on black clothes, wear ties, hold black umbrellas, and queue up to attend my funeral and memorial service instead.”
The system offered: “If required, I can provide a paragraph-by-paragraph reading service for you, with an estimated reading duration of fifty minutes.”
“Stop, stop, stop,” Pei Yuan interrupted. “It’s still early, I don’t want to sleep yet, thanks.”
Sighing heavily, she skipped the table of contents and embarked on the arduous first step of her epic journey.
Article One of the main text: Party A is Cen Zhixu, Party B is Pei Yuan.
Things still seemed relatively normal here. Pei Yuan swiped the light screen and read further.
“Classification of intimate relationship levels, private space rules, dietary management standards…”
Pei Yuan’s gaze gradually glazed over. “Wait, what are these clauses further down?”
“If one party is subjected to detention or imprisonment? If one party is kidnapped by mercenaries demanding a ransom? If the White Tower city is invaded and conquered by external armed forces?”
She flipped further down, finding even more absurd entries like “In the event of an extraterrestrial biological invasion of the White Tower.”
“Is Cen Zhixu for real?”
Pei Yuan buried her head in her hands and wailed. “What mercenary would dare barge into the White Tower to kidnap her? Do they think they’ve lived too long?”
Wait.
Well, it wasn’t entirely outside the realm of possibility.
A certain mercenary who had infiltrated the White Tower and considered kidnapping Cen Zhixu to make her escape more than once was currently sitting right here, reading a contract until her head spun.
With every single chapter she flipped through, Pei Yuan felt another fraction of her soul drain away.
The contract’s wording was rigorously dense, every instance of including but not limited to followed by at least five sub-items, every reference to see appendix pointing toward a brand new ocean of text.
Mugging her way through to the hundred and twentieth clause, Pei Yuan finally hit her breaking point.
“Sys,” she whined weakly, “how much have I read? Must be about halfway by now, right?”
The system calmly stated: “Your current reading progress is 2.7 percent.”
“…”
Pei Yuan pitched forward, her forehead hitting the desktop with a dull thud.
She stayed slumped right there, unmoving, like a salted fish repeatedly abused by life that had finally and utterly lost all its dreams.
The system comforted her: “Host, please do not be discouraged. If you maintain your current efficiency, you will successfully complete your first read within a maximum of thirty-six to forty hours.”
Pei Yuan: “…”
Thanks a lot, I feel even more hopeless now.
“That Cen Zhixu,” she muttered miserably into the crook of her arm, shifting blame all around, “dumping me here to suffer while who knows where she went off to have fun.”
The next second, Pei Yuan abruptly bolted upright, snatched her jacket from the back of the chair, and slung it over her shoulder.
The system warned: “Host, if you fail the spot-check, Miss Cen may grow displeased with you.”
“Screw it,” Pei Yuan strode toward the door. “I’ve got an infinitely more important task right now.”
“To go make some trouble for Cen Zhixu.”
Taking a brisk step forward, Pei Yuan spoke in a breezy tone, “Since she tortured me with this mountain of text, it’s only fair I return the favor.”
Simultaneously, in the White Tower’s cloud ladder.
The metal tracks vibrated softly, emitting a faint hum like some massive, intricate mechanical heart falling deep into the earth’s core.
Cen Zhixu stood on the right side, her lashes lowered, expression detached. Silver chains hung down, swaying with the slight tremors of the cloud ladder.
An Alpha guard stood respectfully two steps behind her, shoulders rigid, staring straight ahead.
The surveillance camera shifted positions, adjusting its aperture and initiating recognition programs as it observed the two figures inside the cloud ladder:
[Zone: White Tower Cloud Ladder 2]
[Recording in progress]
The silence stretched on for several floors. The guard broke it first, her voice dropping very low: “Chief.”
“I must venture to ask, is your physical condition sufficient to support this interrogation?”
She weighed her phrasing carefully: “The interrogation room is a confined space. If that person deliberately releases a high concentration of Alpha pheromones, we worry you might be affected.”
“It’s fine,” Cen Zhixu said indifferently.
The guard nodded, then added, “Councilor Suppression also wishes to know how the Alpha selected through the compatibility test has been performing recently.”
“If necessary, the White Tower can dispatch guards to take coercive measures against her to ensure her compliance.”
“No need, she is very obedient.”
Cen Zhixu adjusted the cuff links of her sleeve. “I will notify you if necessary.”
The guard lowered her head: “Understood, subordinate comprehends.”
Quiet settled back over the cloud ladder. Cen Zhixu gazed quietly ahead, the ladder wall reflecting her profile.
The metal cast a cool, dark grey tint, hiding her features in the seams of light and shadow: soft yet cold, hazy and indistinct.
Her long hair cascaded from her shoulder, winding silently in the reflection like a fish swimming into deep water, leaving behind only a trace of cold white ripples.
She wasn’t lying; Pei Yuan truly qualified as well-behaved most of the time.
Cen Zhixu thought nonchalantly.
Just occasionally,
she could be a bit mischievous.
The surveillance feed rippled for a microsecond before completing its reconstruction in fractions of a second. Aperture adjusted, angle corrected, depth of field locked.
She gazed quietly at everything, never stopping:
[Zone: White Tower B7 Solitary Interrogation Room]
[Recording in progress]
The perspective was high, overlooking the scene.
The room wasn’t large. Four seamless alloy anti-collision walls, a metal table bolted to the floor, two straight-backed chairs.
A bolted metal table, two straight-backed chairs. No windows, no clock.
A cold-light lamp hung overhead, providing vertical illumination and pressing shadows into short, thin shapes. Not a single hidden patch of darkness was permitted to exist.
In the lower-left corner of the frame, a string of tiny characters ticked by silently.
[Time: 18:02:33]
[Ambient Temperature: 18.1℃]
A figure was curled up in the interrogation chair.
She wore only a thin shirt, shivering from the cold or perhaps fear, panting incessantly.
A pale blue grid swept downward from top to bottom, scanning her contours, conforming to her face and body before vanishing.
Recognition complete.
A string of data labels was pinned beside her image, refreshing in real-time according to her status:
[Code: B-1174]
[Gender: Female | Type: Alpha]
[Heart Rate: 93 BPM]
[Micro-expression Analysis: Anxious]
[Threat Assessment: Medium]
The Alpha kept her head lowered, her hands locked in handcuffs to a metal bar beneath the tabletop. The sound of metal clinking was small and frequent.
Her lips were chapped, her tongue repeatedly sweeping across them to leave moisture that dried up almost instantly.
18.1℃.
The chilled air clung to her skin, the coolness spreading from her fingertips, climbing up her wrists and drilling into the bone seams.
Cold.
The interrogation room’s temperature was precisely controlled: not cold enough to induce hypothermia, yet cool enough to force the body to continuously expend heat and calories just to maintain core temperature.
A war of attrition without gunpowder.
Designed to grind down human cognition and willpower like a melting candle, slowly shrinking away.
With a soft click, the heavy alloy door was pushed open from the outside.
Corridor light sliced through the gap, drawing a narrow white line before being cut off by a silhouette.
Someone stood in the doorway.
Backlit.
Features indistinguishable, only a shadow visible. Tall, impeccably neat uniform, falling silver hair.
Intricate silver chains cascaded from her shoulder, wrapping past her waistline and swaying with her breath, emitting faint sounds.
Ting, ting.
Like wind chimes.
Or perhaps some form of warning.
Cen Zhixu stepped inside, carrying a cup of water in one hand while a stack of calfskin folders was tucked beneath her elbow.
The Alpha jerked her head up, the chains rattling as her gaze locked fiercely onto her.
“I told you, I’m innocent! You bunch of trash arrested the wrong person!”
The Alpha roared, her voice hoarse to the point of breaking: “Get out of here! Tell your superior I’m not cooperating anymore!”
“Stop sending people in here to play these games with me, I won’t say a single word!”
Cen Zhixu’s shoulder line shuddered. Startled back half a step by the roar, she instinctively clutched the files tighter to her chest.
She stared blankly at the Alpha, a film of mist welling up in her eyes. As their gazes collided, she lowered her head in flustered panic.
The Alpha froze.
The residual anger lingering in her throat hadn’t dissipated yet, but that fire had lost its landing spot, hanging suspended in mid-air with nowhere left to burn.
An Omega?
What was she doing here?
“S-Sorry,” Cen Zhixu stammered out, “the people at the White Tower sometimes cross the line with how they do things. Really sorry.”
The water cup was set gently on the table and pushed toward the Alpha. A thin layer of condensation coated the rim; it was warm water.
“Drink some water.”
Her tone was gentle and soft.
Cen Zhixu turned sideways, intending to set down the folders tucked in her elbow, but her fingertips suddenly trembled and she lost her grip.
The folders scattered, fanning out messily across the steel tabletop.
Cen Zhixu drew a sharp breath, hurriedly bending down to pick them up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she apologized repeatedly, “I’m so clumsy.”
Gathering the final sheet, she carefully placed the folder to one side of the table before pulling out a chair.
Cen Zhixu sat down opposite her, her knees pressed together and slanted slightly to one side, hands folded over the tabletop.
The Omega’s faint scent drifted over: timid, fragile, beautiful, resembling a white iris soaking in a cold mist.
“I’m from the review department. Normally I only handle file organization, and I was only transferred here temporarily.”
Dropping her eyelashes, she whispered, “They said sending an Omega to talk with you might work better.”
The Alpha’s expression eased somewhat compared to moments before, though a trace of wariness still lurked in the depths of her eyes.
“Um, are you very cold?”
Cen Zhixu frowned slightly. “Sorry, the interrogation room’s environmental controls are a bit spotty sometimes. I’ll have someone turn it up.”
She got up and left.
A moment later, warm air slowly drifted in.
The Alpha’s tense shoulder line finally relaxed a fraction.
Cen Zhixu returned shortly after, pulling out her chair with a shy smile: “Don’t be nervous, I’m not here to interrogate you.”
“To be honest, the assignment came too suddenly, I didn’t even have time to look at the file.”
Her tone was gentle: “Why don’t we just chat casually? Do you need anything? Warm water, food, or a shawl.”
The Alpha watched her in silence for a few seconds, her voice slightly hoarse as she spoke: “You… you’re not like them.”
“Of course, I’m here to help you.”
Cen Zhixu said warmly.
They chatted about trivial matters: the weather, music, nutrient packs, piecemeal fragments.
Cen Zhixu let out light laughs from time to time, her brows curved, lips parted slightly in a shallow smile, light dancing upon her eyelashes as they flickered, back and forth.
Under the cold white illumination, the timestamp ticked silently past three hours. The water on the table had been replaced twice, and Cen Zhixu had gradually shifted from sitting across the table to sitting right beside the Alpha.
Picking up a folder, she flipped through it before frowning slightly.
“For some reason, the White Tower suspects you once had ties to a mercenary squad out in the wasteland.”
Cen Zhixu pulled out two photographs, slowly pushing them across the table toward the Alpha.
The two photos overlapped seamlessly, revealing only the image on top.
It was a candid shot.
The picture showed swirling yellow sands and a murky, turbid sky. Shot hastily and blurry with heavy motion blur, it failed to mask the oppressive aura the woman radiated.
Bright red curls whipped into a wild fire amid the dust and wind, scorching the withered grey sky.
She crouched behind a ruined wall, her graceful yet taut forearm arched upward, a sniper rifle steadied firmly against her shoulder while a pitch-black muzzle aimed straight at the camera lens.
A windscarf covered the lower half of her face, leaving only a pair of fierce, unrestrained eyes. The woman arched a brow slightly, looking down upon the other end of the lens with a wolf-like wildness and contempt.
There was no subsequent photograph.
Because she had pulled the trigger.
“Have you ever heard of a mercenary squad called Rust Fang?” Cen Zhixu explained.
“Some people spotted squad members in the outer district, but we’ve never found any leads on their captain, Red Snake.”
The Alpha shook her head: “I don’t know anything about mercenaries, and I’ve never had any contact with them.”
“Mhm, I know.”
Cen Zhixu smiled gently.
With a flick of her fingertip, she slid the red-haired woman’s photo aside, revealing another one hidden beneath.
“Because you aren’t part of any mercenary squad. You’re a member of the rebel organization Flint, aren’t you?”
The Alpha’s pupils constricted sharply.
The photograph showed a desolate, rundown old port piled high with rusted, abandoned shipping containers forming tall walls.
Two figures stood in the shadows; one’s face was blurred, but her build, posture, and clothing matched the Alpha almost perfectly.
The other individual stood with her back to the camera, wearing an altered windbreaker jacket with an obvious tattoo on her bare shoulder.
“This person beside you,” Cen Zhixu pointed at the back in the photo, “is a confirmed member of Flint.”
The Alpha’s chest heaved violently. Subconsciously struggling against her handcuffs, she made a sharp clank sound.
Her voice trembled alongside the motion: “Wait, hold on, why are you, this, I…”
“Isn’t it fascinating?”
Cen Zhixu smiled softly: “You told your previous interrogator you had never set foot in the old port, yet this photograph was explicitly captured right there.”
Tilting her head slightly, she raised her long lashes. A wisp of shallow mist drifted within her grey-blue eyes, shimmering with fragmented light.
“Darling, why lie to me?”
The Alpha grew even more flustered: “No, that’s not it, that’s not me in the photo at all, I don’t know that person, I, I…”
“Thud!”
Fingers clenched into a fist slammed viciously onto the tabletop, causing the water cup to shake violently and splash out a few droplets.
Cen Zhixu sprang to her feet.
Bracing one hand against the table edge, she leaned forward, her shadow plunging downward without warning.
The Alpha tried to back away, but the chair back, handcuffs, corner of the wall, and table edge trapped her immovably in place with nowhere left to run.
The soft, damp iris scent laden with morning dew was utterly drained of moisture in that instant.
The petals withered, the dew evaporated, leaving behind nothing save a rusty, metallic bitterness deep within the roots.
The Omega pheromone descended abruptly, filling the interior space from all directions, airtight and crushing her breath and nerves inch by inch.
Not pacification or enticement, but a thorough, pure, uncompromising suppression.
“Speak.”
“What is your role in Flint? Who sent you into the city? What was your purpose? How did you pass the screening? Do you have an inside contact in the city?”
Cen Zhixu spoke at lightning speed, her words short and sharp, end-to-end like a blunt instrument repeatedly smashing into an old wound, leaving no room to breathe.
The Alpha clenched her teeth, attempting to summon her pheromone to resist, but the moment her breath surged from her gland, it was crushed flat on impact.
A short, stifled gasp caught in her throat as she trembled uncontrollably.
The chilly iris scent wrapped around every syllable, stabbing into her skin piece by piece.
“From now on, answer.”
Cen Zhixu lowered her upper body, gaze drooping like a fallen feather brushing lightly against the other’s face.
Her voice was equally soft, lingering close to a whisper.
“I don’t like asking twice.”
The interrogation room door slid open. Cen Zhixu stepped out, peeling off her black gloves and tossing them into the disposal bin.
Her fingers were pale and slender, faint greenish veins faintly visible, the tips flushed light red from the cold.
The junior assistant hurried forward, draping a coat over her shoulders. Cen Zhixu nodded, turning her attention to the nearby recorder: “All logged?”
The recorder bowed respectfully: “Yes, Chief.”
“Then I’ll head back first,” Cen Zhixu gathered the coat around her shoulders. “Notify me if there are any new developments.”
“Understood.”
“Oh right,” Cen Zhixu added, “bring a blanket and some warm water inside.”
Turning her head, she glanced back at the closed interrogation room door, her tone light, gentle, and tinged with pity:
“She might have been terribly frightened.”
Outside the window, the sky grew dim. Even the lights in the White Tower’s inner city were uniform white dots, monotonous and dull.
In the living room, Pei Yuan sat cross-legged on the long-pile rug, furiously tinkering with something as the corners of her mouth curled higher and higher.
The system warned: “Host, I must remind you that Miss Cen has an 88.09% probability of growing angry because of this, an 11% probability of punishing you by copying the agreement, and a 0.01% probability of making you pack your bags and leave.”
Pei Yuan snapped her head up, shocked. “The probability of getting kicked out is that low?”
Her eyes shone brightly, her mischievous grin widening. “Then shouldn’t I be trying it out even more?”
The system: “…”
As human and system muttered amongst themselves, the soft chime of biometric recognition sounded, followed by the doors automatically sliding apart to the sides.
Cen Zhixu walked in.
White shirt, dark trousers, uniform jacket cradled in her arm: she retained that same quiet, pristine elegance.
Pei Yuan dashed over in a flash, smiling brightly as she began, “Welcome back, Ch—,” yet she ground to a subtle halt right as she drew close.
Cen Zhixu looked calm.
Yet, her complexion was paler than usual, the corners of her eyes flushed red, her neck beaded with fine sweat, and several strands of silver hair stuck damply to her skin, scattered and disheveled.
Even the shirt buttoned all the way to the top, typically immaculate, bore several creases around the collar and cuffs.
The silence lingered too long. A flicker of confusion crossing her face, Cen Zhixu raised her gaze to look at her. “What is it?”
Pei Yuan didn’t answer.
She simply took a tiny step forward.
The distance between them was far too close; Cen Zhixu instinctively took half a step back, her lower back pressing against the cabinet corner beside the door.
Pei Yuan merely tilted her head slightly, drawing close to Cen Zhixu’s face, her nose brushing against a strand of stray silver hair as she inhaled lightly.
Her lashes dropped.
Cen Zhixu carried the scent of another Alpha on her.
Very faint, yet still perceptible.
An eyesore.
Pei Yuan’s fingers tightened, the smile softening slightly before she finally spoke: “Just a bit curious.”
“Who on earth could get this close to the Chief?”
Cen Zhixu paused slightly.
She caught onto the underlying subtext almost immediately, the moisture in her eyes shifting and overflowing into a hint of amusement.
Cen Zhixu stood on tiptoe.
Raising her hand, she hooked her arm around Pei Yuan’s neck, pulling her close like a flexible vine dragging her downward.
Her lips grazed the side of Pei Yuan’s face, warm breath puffing against her ear while stray strands of hair brushed past her jaw, planting an ambiguous, damp itch.
“What,” Cen Zhixu chuckled softly, “unhappy?”
Her fingertips landed on the back of Pei Yuan’s neck, stroking slowly back and forth over the burning gland before sliding toward her spine.
“Pei Yuan,” she said.
“Want to cover up her scent?”